


What Happens in the Steam Pipe Distribution Venue, Stays in the...

by tjs_whatnot



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 18:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17688515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: It's the end of the world. Maybe.





	What Happens in the Steam Pipe Distribution Venue, Stays in the...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SuburbanSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/gifts).



Joshua Lyman banged on the door for the twelfth time that hour. “Hey! Hey! We’re down here!”

Donna Moss took a deep breath, biting back the comment she’d made 10 times in the last hour. _No one is out there. No one can hear you._ He knew that, she knew that he knew that. It was a compulsion. She’d learned the hard way--but still couldn’t stop herself most times--that there was no talking him down from his compulsions.

Instead she sighed. “I told you it was going to happen this way. I told you when I died, I was going to be standing next to you. I was going to be ‘Also Dead Diane Moss.’”

“We’re going to be fine. The sirens have stopped. That’s a good sign.”

The air horns had been terrifying. Especially after the doors had clicked locked in the windowless, dungeon of a room. Donna hadn’t known that “Lock Down” was taken so literally here so far away from the West Wing and the Oval Office.

“What do you suppose is happening?” she asked, feeling that enough time had passed since his last hysterical, hyperventilating attack that she could calmly have a conversation with him now.

They had come to the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue to look for Ainsley. Initially, it had been Donna’s chore, but Josh had been in a groove with explaining some archaic law and how important this new legislation was to end it, that he had just wound up following her down there. They had just discovered she wasn’t there and were dropping off a file, a memo and a note when the alarm had blared and the door had locked behind them.

He slapped his hand against the door one more time before abandoning it and turning back to her. “I don’t know. It’s killing me, but I don’t know.”

He looked over her shoulder to the desk where the pieces of his cell phone had been collected after he’d thrown it against the wall and it had shattered into a million shards of plastic and hardware. It didn’t matter, the phones were down. Ainsley’s wasn’t working, neither was Donna’s cell. 

“I think I’m really going to regret giving that card back.”

“The card?”

“The National Security card that they gave me with instructions on where to go and how to get to the bunker in case of an apocalyptic scenario.”

“Oh, yeah.” Donna remembered he had told her about that and even then, she couldn’t imagine what the End Days would be like without him. “Well, I’m not.”

“No?”

She took a deep breath, but smiled. “We might need you to repopulate.”

“Yeah?”

She swallowed but didn’t say anything else.

He studied her. 

“What?” she asked after a long minute. She swiped a piece of loose hair behind her ear, forcing herself not to blush or turn away.

“Nothing. Just trying to imagine what our kids would look like.”

Her face burned. “Yeah?” she asked in a whisper, terrified of her own voice.

He continued to look at her, almost detached, almost like he was imagining her mouth and his nose on a tiny face. “They’d be beautiful,” he said, almost like he was awed by the realization.

She froze. She needed something pithy to say, some distraction to bring it back to normal, bring them out of this small, badly ventilated, locked room where there was no escape and bring them back to what they do out there in the world, who they are to each other out there. She couldn’t think of anything. 

She just smiled weakly and looked down, focusing on his breast pocket.

After an awkward silence, he chuckled. “Of course, you might have to share me with the rest of the survivors.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, to get the repopulating going, I might have to… you know…”

“Spread your seed?”

“Well… yeah.”

Donna laughed. “Well, firstly, ew. Second, in your scenario, you’re the last man alive?”

“Well… yeah. Maybe.”

“Ew.”

“Thanks,” Josh said, hurt.

“No, I mean, even if you _spread your seed_ all over the world, they’d still all be yours. They’d all be _related_.” She shivered.

“Oh… Yeah. Ew.”

Donna signed, relieved.

Usually their flirting was innocent, meant nothing more than inappropriate work banter, but there were other times where it was on the cusp of being too real and meaning _everything_. Donna had learned early on to avoid letting it get to that place at all costs.

*~*~*

Donna couldn’t remember when she’d fallen in love with Joshua Lyman, though, with her track record with men, it was inevitable that she would fall in love with her mentor and boss. _No one can say you don’t have a type_ , she often chastised herself. She did remember though when it became apparent to the smartest, savviest of those on the campaign trail with them: Dolores Landingham and Margaret Hooper.

They pulled her aside, like they had many times in the months since she joined the campaign. She was grateful every time they took her under their wing. She’d always flitted between one interest to another, always searching for something to believe in, to be passionate about. The more she listened to the Governor’s speeches, the more Josh talked about the process, the more Toby articulated the possibilities and promises that a well governed society could achieve, the more she wanted to be good at this, the more she _needed_ to be a part of it. She hung on Mrs. Landingham and Margaret’s every word.

It was clear early on that not only was Josh a key player in them winning, but that he was one of the only members of the campaign staff to have a guaranteed position in the administration if they won. Besides Leo and the Governor himself, he was the only one with an assistant. She was determined to be there when that happened.

Mrs. Landingham--always Mrs. Landingham no matter how many times there in the beginning she insisted they could call her Dolores--and Margaret had sat her down and said:

“You can either pursue a romantic relationship with Josh, or you can pursue a professional one. You can’t have both.”

She knew that. Of course she did. But, how do you stop loving someone once you’ve started? If his neuroses, inconsideration, and condescending, belittling tendencies didn’t do it, what would? It was easier for them, Mrs. Landingham and the Governor had known each other since he was a school boy, they were like siblings. Leo was married and had a kid who was almost as old as Margaret was, and still sometimes Donna saw Margaret struggled as well, you just had to look a lot harder. 

In the end, that's what she told herself she must do. Make it harder to detect. Most of the time, she was pretty good at it.

But, most of the time, she had distractions, ways to avoid, deflect and escape. She had none of those things now. All she had was a locked room and an uncertain threat of extension and the man she loved against her will and reason. All bets were off.

And then the power went out.

*~*~*

“Fuck,” Josh beautifully articulated for them both. “What now?”

“I’m sure it’s just procedure.”

“Procedure for what?” Josh asked. “I need to know what is HAPPENING!” He kicked the door for emphasis.

He heard Donna sigh as he felt the pain in his toe scream. He couldn’t remember if he’d used the same foot the last time he’d kicked the door or if he’d sprained a whole other toe on a whole other foot this time. He grabbed the handle and pulled and pushed, feeling almost optimistic that every push _seemed_ to give a little more. Only… well, he’d been feeling that way for hours now. Hours now and they were still locked in, they were still apparently forgotten and now they were in almost complete darkness. There was a sliver of light coming from the tiny window right above the ceiling--too far to reach, and too far away from anyone to hear if they could get it open and scream for help. 

_We need help_ , he thought trying to force himself to breathe normally again.

“Eureka!” Donna shouted and her whole face was lit up by the flashlight she had apparently just pulled from somewhere. 

“Here,” she said, holding another one out to him. “Oh, and here.” It was a banana-nut muffin and Donna had pulled it out of Ainsley’s desk drawer.

“Genius,” Josh said, awed, biting into the muffin and moaning as if he hadn’t eaten in days. There was something about being locked up and abandoned that heightened senses.

“When the power went out, it reminded me that Ainsley had said that her office often lost power and heat, so I figured she’d be prepared.” She kept rummaging. “For every possibility apparently; there’s a drawer full of baked goods.” She opened another drawer, “And Fresca.”

“God bless her gun-toting, Confederate flag waving, neurotic heart.” He popped the tab of the can she tossed him before looking up to her. “Wait, you said something about heat?”

Just the idea of losing heat in this subterranean torture chamber sent a shiver down his spine. “What’s she got for that?”

Donna looked through the rest of the desk drawers then the file cabinets. “Ha! Ha!” She held up a bundle of plush fabric. She opened it up. “What the hell _is_ this?”

Josh focused his flashlight on it. A big blanket with...arms? “I think I’ve seen those on late night TV. A slanket? I think that’s what they’re called. Is there another one??”

“Why would there be?? How many people do you think she has to keep warm on a given day?”

Josh shrugged. He guessed that was a fair point. “Well, it looks big enough to share.”

“We could… could take turns.”

Josh studied her for a moment before holding out his hand. “Okay. Me first.”

She rolled her eyes and threw the slanket to him. He found a cozy space on the floor, slid the rug that was laid out in the center of the room to avoid sitting on the cold cement, making sure it was big enough for the two of them. Just in case.

He sat down and watched her, pointing the flashlight at her center as not to blind her. Now she looked like the panicked one. Pacing, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, as if to keep warm. It was a long time before she so much as looked at him. When she did, he held up a corner of the plush fabric. “I don’t bite.”

She sighed and walked over. Sitting as far away as the slanket would allow, she thanked him.

Josh felt the temperature under the blanket drop. “You’re freezing,” he said, sliding closer to her.

“Then why are you getting closer?”

“The faster you warm up, the faster _we_ warm up. It’s science.”

She groaned, but a moment later, she must have felt his hypothesis was right, for she snuggled a little closer and he could feel her warmth against him. It felt really nice.

*~*~*

Josh couldn’t recall the exact moment he started thinking about Donnatella Moss as more than an assistant, more than staff, but he was pretty sure it was after he’d noticed that she felt likewise. He did remember, however, the first and only time he broached the subject with his friends, just the _idea_ of it being more than a work thing. They were still on the campaign trail, sometime between the primaries and the general election. That’s when he remembered.

Sam and he were walking to his office. Something caught his eye and he watched as Donna talked on the phone, the receiver wedged between her ear and shoulder so that she could type as she listened, stopping from time to time to jot down a note. When she caught Josh’s eye, her face lit up, she waved him over, handed him a stack of phone messages and went back to typing, never even losing the thread of the apparent monologue on the phone.

They walked into his office, but he turned one last time to watch her before turning back. Toby was sitting behind Josh’s desk with a stack of newspapers before him and one open that he was flipping through.

“Hey,” Josh started, “You think me and Donna--”

“No,” Sam cut him off before he’d even finished the sentence, which was probably good because he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to articulate it.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you can’t start anything with Donna. Not now. Not while she’s working for you.”

“It could… I mean… my parents met that way. She was his secretary, then his paralegal. It doesn’t _have_ to be unseemly.”

“Josh, those were different times. Nothing was unseemly in the ‘50s. They drank at lunch and smoked at their desks. You could have a little hanky-panky with your underlings ”

“It’s not about _that_! It wasn’t about that for my parents either, it’s… I don’t know… more than that.”

Sam’s look was almost pitying. He turned to Toby who was still scanning the paper as if he hadn’t even noticed them in the room. “You want to help me out here?”

Toby looked up. “Yeah. No. You can’t.”

*~*~*

It hadn’t been about that then, and it definitely wasn’t about it now. It has always been _more_ and he’d never been able to articulate just what that more was. Mostly, because he’d stopped himself from thinking about it. They were right. He couldn’t. Not like this.

“Donna?”

“Josh?”

He was suddenly glad that they were in the dark. This was a conversation that would do better without the burden of sight. He already could imagine what she would look like, when she’d look demurely away, when she’d force herself to not. And of course she’d know what he’d look like as he stumbled around the subject.

“Do you ever think about… if we didn’t work together?”

“What do you mean? Are you _firing_ me?”

“No. Of course not. I was just wondering, pondering really. If we didn’t work together, if we’d met another way, you think we’d be… friends?”

“How would we have met?”

“I don’t know. How do people in the real world ever meet each other?”

“The fact that you have to ask that question, implies that we would have never met if we didn’t work together,” Donna said.

“Okay, well, maybe we did meet at work, but not in the roles we have now. Not as boss and employee, but as colleagues.”

“Would we be friends if we met as colleagues and not boss and employee?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t understand. That question suggests that we’re not friends now. Is that true?”

Josh groaned. How was he so _bad_ at this? “Of course we’re friends, more than that. But do you think we could have… would have been… even more?”

“Even more than the even more that we are now?”

“Come on, Donna, don’t be obtuse. Surely you’ve thought about it?”

He heard her swallow and her reply came out breathy and rushed. “And if I have?”

“What have you thought?”

It was a long time before she began to answer. “I think we walk a very fine line between what we are and what we could be. I think that what we are is too important to me to sacrifice it for what we could be. I like my job, I like working where I do, doing what I do. Do I want more? Sure I do, both professionally and… personally--”

“Romantically?”

Again there was a long pause. “Perhaps. But...not enough.”

Josh let out a massive sigh of relief. 

After a moment, Donna pushed. “Since we’ve decided that we’re never getting out of here and are baring our souls before we die, tell me what you’ve thought.”

“We have enough baked goods to live for quite a few days, maybe I should wait on the baring of the soul thing for a while… just in case.”

“In case?” Donna asked.

“In case we do get out of here and we’ll never be able to look at each other again.”

“Easy for you to say, it’s too late for me.”

“Donna, do you really think you told me anything that I didn’t already know?”

“What?” Donna asked in a shaky whisper.

“It’s okay. If it wasn’t a secret, than talking about it doesn’t change anything.”

Donna laughed weakly. “To you. It doesn’t change anything for you. But for me? It changes everything.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. How about we agree, if we get out of here, whatever happened here, stays here.”

“What’s going to happen in here?” Donna asked, sounding part excited and part terrified.

“Here goes,” Josh whispered and took a deep breath. He could feel Donna tense up next to him as if he might kiss her. Instead, he began to talk. “I too think about more. About what we could be and what we could possibly lose. But…”

“But?” Donna barely breathed.

“For me, I have to weigh the want of you against the need of you.”

There was a long silence that went beyond two people not talking, that felt more like the air stopped moving, the planet stopped rotating on its axis, all time stopped. It felt unreal and Josh wasn’t sure if he could face what came after.

Donna nudged him gently. “Go on.”

He exhaled, laughing shakily. “This is where I tell you what you already know. I _need_ you. I don’t know how to do what I do without you. That’s _terrifying_. For me to be good at what I do--and I do need to be exceptional at what I do--then I need you to be...you. I need us to be us, as we are now. But…”

“But?” Donna asked,sounding a bit exasperated with the pauses.

Josh took a deep breath and looked at her. He couldn’t see more than a silhouette of her in the sliver of dusk peeking through the window and didn’t think now would be a good time to turn the flashlight back on in her face. He knew she was looking at him though, could feel his gaze; knew she was close, could feel her breath on his lips. 

“But… I want more.”

She was closer now and he didn’t know if she had moved forward or he had. All he knew was that there was only so much closer she could get before everything changed forever. It was too late though, it had already begun to happen because he realized that he was incapable of pulling away.

“What happens here…” she whispered.

“Stays here…” he finished.

 _This will be okay_ , he frantically thought. _We’ll just kiss and then we’ll know._

Her lips were moist and soft. 

_We’ll just know if it’s even worth it._

Their noses rubbed together side-by-side like they just _fit_. He tilted his head to the left and she to the right like synchronized swimmers.

_If it’s even worth it to want..._

Her tongue licked along his lower lip and he shivered. He slicked his tongue along hers and heard her moan deep in her throat. 

_Fuck,_ was the last thing he thought before he gave up thinking at all. _We’re fucked._

Her fingers on one hand were running through the back of his hair, the other hand around his shoulders. He was cupping her cheek with one hand and contemplating what to do with the other when there was a click that it took Josh a moment to realize was the door unlocking. It took him another moment to realize why he should care.

They broke the kiss but neither one of them was ready to break the spell. They leaned their warmed foreheads together.

“Fuck,” Donna perfectly articulated for both of them. “I was _really_ hoping that we’d be bad at that.”

Josh smiled wide. “It certainly would have made things easier if we had been.”

“But it was lovely.”

The lights came back on just as Donna’s phone began to ring. She scrambled to retrieve it from her jacket pocket.

“Hello!” she shouted.

And just like that the world came rushing back in, and with it all the questions and fears that had haunted him for the entire time they’d been in there. He stood up and helped her to her feet.

“Donna!” he heard Sam shout on the other line. He grabbed the phone from her as Sam continued, “Is Josh with you?”

“I’m right here, buddy. What’s going on? Is everyone okay?”

“Everything’s fine now. Where are you?”

“We’ve been… we’re… doesn’t matter, we’re on our way, where are you?”

“Come to the Oval.”

He hung up and handed the phone back to her.

Donna busied herself with folding the slanket, returning the flashlights. Josh fought his need to run out in the world and see what happened. “Are we okay?”

She smiled and walked to the door. “We’re fine. Better than fine.”

“Yeah?” Josh answered, following her out the door.

They climbed the rusty stairs that led to the door that took them out of the subterranean and into the real world.

“Yeah. I’ve just realized something.”

“What’s that?” Josh asked. Stopping her from opening the door. He felt this conversation needed to be done before they left this space, or they wouldn’t be able to hold on to their flimsy excuse of what happened in the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue stayed there.

“That all of that,” she waved her hand towards the door where the world waited, “and all that we are out there is finite. It has a built-in end. We’re not going to be in the White House forever, I’m not going to be your Girl Friday forever. And that,” she waved to the room below them, “and this,” she leaned over and kissed him, “is worth the wait.”


End file.
